Junior School Update

We have officially made it to the end of another tumultuous year and I’m sure the whole Box Hill High School Community is keen to take a collective breath and reset for, what will hopefully be, a more stable year of learning in 2022.

It was fantastic to have our students back with us for Term 4; as teachers, those face-to-face interactions are what drive us, and it was great to see so many of our students equally excited to see us too! As always, Term 4 is a mad rush to the end of the year. For our students it was about coming back and relearning some positive learning behaviours and re-forging social connections; along with preparing for the completion of end-of-year assessments.

The end of the term is a time for us to celebrate our achievements and reflect on the year that has been. Firstly we want to thank those students in the Junior School who have taken positions of leadership throughout the year – particularly our outgoing SRC members and our Class Captains. The Class Captains particularly, played a role in the final weeks of the year, organising thank you packs for their teachers to show gratitude and assisting with the organisation and planning for some of the final assemblies and fun sessions during our Step-Up Week Program.

We would also like to acknowledge the individual contributions of our students to making sure that, despite the challenges of the year, they continued to show resilience by pushing themselves forward to new levels of academic excellence. We had a large number of students this year receive awards for Sustained Genuine effort, an acknowledgement from their teachers of the positive learner behaviours they displayed in their classes and the effort they put into their work. Additionally, we want to again congratulate our students who received academic excellence awards as the top achievers in their classes. One student of particular note is Rachel Mei from 7Z, who achieved the top 0.3% in the Australian Mathematics Competition. It was great to have the opportunity to celebrate all of these achievements with students in our final assembly for the year, and through the positive interactions at both our Year Level and Junior School Celebration Days, which took place in the final week.

The other great aspect of the end of the year is to look ahead and plan for a positive start for next year. In the Junior School this year, this setting up for success was a high priority after the disruptions we experienced. Through our Step-Up Program in the final week, our students worked in their Form Group classes for 2022 in a range of different subject areas. A big thank you to our Careers Team who also organised sessions throughout the week where students were able to take part in some engaging sessions that exposed them to different career pathways. We were so impressed by the way that our students embraced the week and actively engaged to establish connections with the peers in their new classes. 

Finally, we would like to farewell our current Year 9 students from the Junior School. As a cohort you have always brought a lot of energy and have made some significant contributions through your leadership to ensure the Junior School is a better place now than when you arrived. It has been great to see so many of you continue to embrace this by volunteering to be Peer Support Leaders next year – welcoming our new Year 7’s and helping them to navigate their first year of high school.

Thanks again to everyone in the community for all of your support this year. 

We look forward to seeing you all again in 2022!